Even in the blackness relieved only by the stark pools of their hand lights, it was obvious the sickbay was in ruins. Oh, there were signs of battle, all right, but most of the damage seemed to have come from looting and vandalism. That wasn’t surprising. More than a few of the crew would have decided that if they were going to die they’d do it in a drug-induced haze. Others would have been looking for poisons, for a quick, painless end. The vandalism would be the result of resentment of the medical personnel who’d failed them.
Ro-Lecton’s tone was businesslike. “Obviously, it could take some time to search through this for memory crystals. I hope the bio lab’s in better shape.”
There was an improvised barricade in front of the separate airlock of the bio lab, and a litter of weapons drifted in the weightlessness. Obviously, someone — probably medical personnel — had fought to defend the lab. The bio lab’s airlock doors were latched back. Kas brushed aside a crude axe whose head was covered with black stains drifting in the weightlessness.. He stepped through, followed by the doctor.
Ro-Lecton breathed a huge sigh of relief as his light revealed little damage or destruction. The light steadied on an empty rack atop a table. “This must be where your Lieutenant gathered those memory crystals,” he commented. “He just grabbed all that were in plain view.”
Kas grinned sourly. “He did have a few other things on his mind at the time, Doctor.”
Ro-Lecton’s suit bobbed slightly and Kas assumed that the doctor had nodded. “I’m sure he did.” The tone was dry. “But I’m also sure that any competent medical personnel would make sure that records of their work survived. There should be a storage… Ah!” The triumph in his tone was clear. Ro-Lecton hurried clumsily toward a small file cabinet in a corner of the lab.
“If I were a med tech and I knew that rioters might get in here and vandalize the place, I’d put the memory crystals in a plain box and stuff them into the back of the bottom drawer of a cabinet full of papers where nobody looking for drugs or poisons would bother with them,” the little man continued. He jerked open the bottom drawer of the cabinet and shifted the file folders it contained. Behind the file folders was a stack of papers lying flat. Ro-Lecton cursed as his clumsy gloved hands lifted the papers, which began to drift away. A small box lay on the bottom of the drawer. The doctor pounced on the box. “Ha! I was sure…”
Kas chuckled. “You might want to look inside the box before you congratulate yourself, Doctor. You might be getting all excited about a box of rubber bands.”
But the box was nearly full of memory crystals as Ro-Lecton had predicted. It was all Kas could do to get the little man to contain his enthusiasm and concentrate on working his way back out of the dead ship.
Ro-Lecton almost assaulted him when he told the little doctor that he would not be able to take the box of crystals to his stateroom for study but Kas was adamant. “You’ll take them to your bio lab. Nothing from that ship goes anywhere else aboard Starhopper,” he insisted. Then he found himself trapped into escorting Ro-Lecton to the bio lab, since he himself had decreed that no one aboard was to work in vacuum alone.
Kas decided it was a good thing the lasers Starhopper mounted were on tracks. Only with them in their deployed position near the open cargo doors was there room for the portable bio lab. The lab formed a flat cylinder some twenty meters in diameter and three high. It consisted of pie-shaped sections that had been bolted together and sealed. A cylindrical airlock protruded from the main cylinder, its exterior festooned with the components of the decontam system.
They entered the airlock and Kas secured the outer hatch. As soon as the hatch was secured the decontam routine began. Both men stood with legs apart and arms stretched outward from their shoulders as their suited forms were bathed in rays that would be lethal to an unsuited man. Finally, a cloud of gas appeared, designed to penetrate the tiniest crack or crevice in their suits. As the gas was sucked into vents near the nozzles Kas took two deep breaths, held his breath and unsealed his helmet.
The lock was now pressurized, but with an inert gas. Kas grabbed for the breathing mask that dangled from the ceiling of the lock, and looked to make sure that Ro-Lecton was following his lead. He cursed himself silently as he realized that the little doctor would be much more familiar with decontam procedures than Kas was.
With the breathing mask secured to his face, he unsuited. Any contaminants that had survived the earlier treatments should be destroyed by the lack of oxygen. He hoped.
They hung the space suits on a rack near the lock’s outer door. Ro-Lecton handed Kas an isolation suit that resembled an oversized, thin space suit made of clear plas. In place of the self-contained air tanks on the back, these had a large umbilical hose that slid along a track in the ceiling. They also had gloves that were much more useful than those of a space suit. These had to be pulled on, stretching into place and gave the wearer the ability to easily handle delicate tasks. The isolation suit’s air was fresh but had that definite but indefinable taste that marked air from tanks.
Ro-Lecton keyed the button that would pump the inert gas into holding tanks, and release the same breathing mixture that filled the lab itself. If their air supply was interrupted somehow, they’d be able to unseal and breathe the mixture that pressurized the lab. Of course, the risk of biological contamination in such a case was very high despite the fact that the air was continually cycled through the most effective scrubbers available.
A light above the inner door turned green, and Ro-Lecton released the inner door and hurried into the lab itself.
Kas looked around the lab. The overhead tracks that supported the umbilicals crisscrossed the ceiling, permitting the suited med techs access to all areas of the lab. The lab itself seemed spartan and cluttered. There were no windows or ports, of course. Tables seemed to be everywhere, and packed between and on top of them, seemingly haphazardly, were crates and boxes. Obviously, Toj had the foresight to put the boxes and crates containing the lab’s equipment and supplies inside as he assembled the lab and before sealing it. Ro-Lecton’s crew were going to spend their first several days in the lab unpacking and setting up, but at least they wouldn’t have to change in and out of space suits to carry the lab’s equipment inside.
Ro-Lecton scrambled over crates, examining labels. After a few minutes, he crowed in triumph and dragged a smallish box to a clear place on a table, where he unpacked a new crystal reader. The eyepieces on the reader were oversized and oddly shaped. It took Kas a moment to realize that the reader was designed for use with the isolation suits.
Ro-Lecton snapped a power cell into place on the unit, then, eyes glued to the eyepieces, adjusted the machine’s parameters for initial use. Trembling with excitement, he slipped a crystal from the box he’d been clutching into the socket.
“Hah!” He crowed. “This is it! Oh, they’re all jumbled together, of course, and we’ll have to put them in order. But that’s no problem.” He turned to Kas with a huge grin. “I imagine that nearly all of the ship’s medical staff’s research is here!” The grin faded. “But really, Commodore. We have to come up with a way for me to study this information in my stateroom. Neither of us wants to wait until my whole team is awake and the lab is operational.”
Kas frowned. Though he’d never admit it he agreed with the doctor. They couldn’t afford the time. “We’ll talk with my comm tech,” he said finally. He broke into a grin. “If there’s a way in the universe that it can be done, Edro’s the man to do it.”
It was the best answer he could have made, he realized a few moments later. It was probably the only way Ro-Lecton could have been convinced to leave the box of crystals he’d been clutching and let himself be led back through the airlock, into his space suit and back to the habitable part of Starhopper.